Buying a wing of my own.

Yesterday, after work, I made a side trip to ikarus, the paragliding school and club I joined earlier this year.
During march I had started preparatory training for paragliding, followed by my first basic stage from 6 to 10 April, teaching me the basics of how to handle and fly a paraglider.
So yesterday I went to buy paragliding equipment so that I could fly and practice without having to rent school equipment every time. Now I think I got lucky, as I managed to buy the same equipment that I had already been using during my stage, barely used and still fit to last me quite a while, I can't wait to test it.

I also signed up for the next stage already, which is the advanced stage in juli and will probably be signing up for two more in September, which is a week of safety followed by a week of thermal stage. Next to those there will also be ikarus fly days on most weekends, and I live right next to the schorre in Boom, which is great for ground handling paragliders, so I'm sure to be (training for) paragliding allot this summer.

Last night I also managed to upload a selection of pictures from the April stage, so if your interested, head over to the picassa web album.

The itch to draw, it's back again...

Every few months, it seems, I get an itch to draw things. From spaceships to abstracts, I've tried allot before, but every time so far, I loose my interest within a few months (one of my more annoying flaws I think).

The itch is back again... this time it's itching me to get back to working on my webcomic idea, whispering some new possibilities into my ear and holding the shadow of a grand story before me.

The trouble is not that I don't like to draw, completely the opposite actually. I would love to draw, crappy as it might be, but every time I've started on a webcomic or other project like it, I loose interest or get fed up with it a month or so down the road, after the itch has left again, the muse is looking at the job offerings and I can't get myself to sit down with a pencil in my hand anymore.

After a few cycles like that, it kinda gets predictable and depressing to look at...
But still, I've got a forgotten worlds universe and story lead from the last cycle that I'm considering restarting.

A few weeks ago I did a few calculations about the world in there and I almost dropped of my chair, the not-so-big world I thought it would be turned out to be gigantic.
Think of an advanced dyson sphere reaching out more or less to where in sol the asteriod belt is, now fill it with air, floating islands and enough soft field tech to keep the air presure constant and the solar radiation from being dangerous*. You could probably have thousands of different earth size populations living inside and still have room left.

* The trick would be to first get the air inside spinning, so all the air etc. molecules are orbiting the sun and not just falling into it. Rotate the air faster the closer it is to the sun and you should be able to have a constant gravity effect towards the outer shell. The soft fields would be a variation of force fields, but instead of thin, hard walls, they would be verry thick area's that you woulden't even feel, slowly pushing the various air masses arround. All powered by that massive powerplant in the middle called a star.

On slightly related news, the story 'The killer Queens of Morugon' got turned down by 365 Tomorrows.
Their response had the following to say.

In order to be effective, Flash Fiction needs to engage you in the action of the story from the first or second word, the writing needs to show primarily, and only tell where absolutely necessary. This is entirely telling, with the promise of a show at the end, and I'm afraid that doesn't work.

If you were to use this as your own back story, and write an action piece that takes place in this world, you'd have a much better chance of success. This could work as the buildup to a longer story, but I'm afraid it's just not suitable as a Flash piece.

They probably have a good point there, but it got me thinking of dropping flash fiction for now, getting rid of the 600 word limits and just writing until it's done on my next pieces.

Qframe weekend, slightly reworked

To start the life-blogging, I thought I'd start with the piece that got me started, slightly reworked to fit mirror talk.

The Qframe weekend has become a tradition at work, every year a part of the Qframe team, loaded with suitcases, snacks and beverages, loads into several cars to spend a weekend in not to far away locations. This time the area of Durbuy and the weekend from 27 to 29 march was our goal.

On Friday, we started by arriving between 18 and 19h in Kontich at our company's headquarters, with the plan to leave one full car at a time whenever enough people had arrived to fill one. On the other end of the ride, every group of new arrivals at the chalet (Le Bois des Rèves in Borlon, Durbuy) seemed to be impressed by the excellent accommodations, which also seems to be turning into a tradition. This time we could enjoy from an extensive vacation house, which was heavily restaurated with different bath- and bedrooms and an extensive kitchen, much more interesting however seemed to be the living rooms with a billiard, table football and several long tables for games, which every evening would be in use up to the early hours of the morning.

The 'pizza hut before departing' tradition had to be broken due to organizational reasons, so instead this was made up by sponsoring the local fries seller. Once everyone was full, the games began. Chapeau seemed to be the favorite this year, unlike gold seeker and where wolves from last year.

The following morning bigger adventure was on the horizon, after an extensive breakfast and a short traffic jam at the douches we headed to Durbuy Adventure, there we would be climbing across the rope course in the morning, followed by a mountain bike treasure search in the afternoon. Except for some short rain showers, the sun was also present, so I'm sure that everyone was exhausted but satisfied by the time we crawled back into the cars, ready to (after some refreshing) dive into the Durbuy nightlife, or at least to dine extensively in Côté Cour.

The mood was once again excellent this year, so after the usual nightly snacks and games for the night owls, it was already halfway to noon when we started breakfast the following day. Since it was the last day some of us really wanted to try out that Jacuzzi, unfortunately with limited success. So onwards to some bow shooting, the activity planned for Sunday, once again with Durbuy Adventure. Once there our big group was split up in two groups and it was remarkable how one group focused heavily on the point count and the competitive side while the other group was way more relaxed, shooting just for fun, once again a proof of the diverse characters at Qframe I suppose.

After a short sidetrack past the treasure chest (filled with carabiners) to finish the previous days treasure search, we finally headed back to the chalet to pack and return home again.

Repurposing this blog

I've been thinking a bit since I got asked if I would write another post for the work blog, and I'm thinking of breaking open the subject for this blog (mirror talk).

Until now, mirror talk was just to keep a record of my writing and story's, but it seems that there's another type of writing I could start with that I can't just link too, namely a real blog.
I shortly considered making a separate blog just to blog about non-writing stuff, but that seems a bit of an arbitrary split...

So in the future, I'll be blogging about different things... probably going the 'this is my boring life but I just want to share it' route that millions of bloggers before me have gone down... and to think I was so shure I would never go that way... :)

Anyway, it will hopefully get me writing, even if it's just about everyday stuff.
So, the post that got me writing are in dutch at the qframe blog under Pieter's blog (and yep, Qframe if the company I work at)